I personally know the Szpilman family and have been to their home in Warsaw. Henryk died, as did all of Władysław Szpilman's immediate relatives. He is survived by a widow, Halina (nee Grzecznarowska), two sons, and two grandchildren. The only blood relatives of Władysław Szpilman who weren't killed in Treblinka were an aunt who immigrated to Argentina before the war; some other distant relatives had immigrated to Brazil and France.
As far as why people were so willing to help Szpilman, there are several reasons. I highly recommend the book "The Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw" by Prof. Gunnar S. Paulsson. The author argues that 28,000 Jews had escaped the Warsaw Ghetto, 11,500 of whom survived to see the city's "liberation" by the Red Army. The rest were killed by Germans, denounced by their Polish neighbors, died of starvation, died during the city-wide Warsaw Uprising, or fell victim to the Hotel Polski scheme. Paulsson estimates that, on the Polish side, there were 70,000-90,000 helpers of Jews, and 3,000-4,000 blackmailers. He claims that those Jews who had the best chance of survival were those who most likely to find helpers and survive were: 1)Assimilated (remember, in Poland at the time most Jews spoke Yiddish as their primary language and were not well-integrated into Polish society) 2)Had friends on the non-Jewish side of the city 3)Spoke good Polish 4)Looked non-Jewish. Except the last factor, Szpilman met all these qualifications. He didn't consider himself to be a Jew, but rather a "Pole of Jewish origins" (he married a non-Jewish woman, and his children were raised Catholic) and his family didn't speak Yiddish or practice Judaism. He was a fairly well-known person in pre-war Poland due to his role on Polish Radio, and was already becoming a celebrity: he wrote many popular Polish songs and wrote the scores to two popular pre-war Polish films. Szpilman himself estimated that about 30 non-Jewish Poles helped him during the war. Of course, this is a testament to these person's courage and nobility, but also to the fact that he had many friends on the Polish side, and could easily pass as a non-Jewish Pole.
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